“A shame.” Toran glanced back at the red glow of the fire from the Blue Library. Smoke rolled along the ceiling, accompanied by the crackle of burning timber and tomes.
“I hate to do it, too, but it’s better than death.” Bonnelle paused, turned, and shrugged. The edge of her pudgy face was rosy in the light. The dwarf then found herself jostled when goblins scouts scurried past her, hauling the statue-Tad and the chest of enchanted lures. One of the scouts mumbled “sorry, miss” as he brushed by.
Ayara and Kornin kept to the rear of the menagerie of elves, orcs, dwarf, goblins, and, boar, wolf, and troll. The two kept to the edge of each turn. He looked ahead to make sure they didn’t lose sight of the others while she scrutinized, ears perked and eyes squinted, for any indication of the Dread Lord they were beckoning to them. When all the others were nearly out of sight the pair signaled one another, quick, silent hand gestures they’d developed during decades in the Fairlaigh militia. They were, as yet, not being pursued. A slight downturn on Ayara’s lips before she and Kornin chased after the others.
The plan would fail if they didn’t draw Withering Sorrows out of the banquet hall. Not that anyone should ever seek to be hunted by a Dread Lord.
Leading the group away from the burgeoning inferno were Toran, the War Masters, and their War Parties. Toran kept his eyes closed, stepping through the hall as if in a daze. Over a thousand years he’d roamed these halls more than all of the orcs and trolls combined and so could navigate the maze by shutting out its maddening magic. Beneath his feet the hall went from plush carpet, to dank cavern floor, and dry echoing tile. Occasionally he’d hush the crowd gathered around him, whose chatter threatened to drag him into the reverie the Dread Lord’s magic held on them.
Still, they chattered.
Bigrummar walked beside Hohza. After a series of unintelligible mumbles and aborted starts to conversation, he placed on massive hand on the orc’s shoulder.
Raising his head, Hohza turned to him, brandishing his electric blade. “Do you hear something?”
“Earlier, when the Dread Lord was about to kill me, you spoke up for me.”
“I did.” Hohza nodded.
“Why did you do that? The Dread Lord was going to kill me. I’ve been nothing but a threat to your leadership since you became a War Master. Any of the others would have let me die without thought.”
Hohza sighed. “It’s a shortsighted fool who would consider it a triumph to see his competition slain just moments before he.” He looked to Gohta, who was trying his best to seem uninterested in their conversation. “If you’d ever paid attention to what I preached in Drink Town, I spoke of our unity. Orcs, goblins, and trolls standing together for one another. As you’ve seen, the Dread Lord uses us, but doesn’t value us. We’re merely resources to be used for their glory and abused for their ego.”
“Besides that, though, it’s not so bad,” Yurzan said.
“Plenty to drink,” Gohta mumbled.
Turning his prized golden peacock feather over, Bigrummar frowned at it. “This whole mess is because of me.”
“Shortsighted fool.” Hohza winked at the troll. “Consider yourself luckier than most to get to learn from it … should we survive.”
There was an urgent whistle in the distance. Sonorous and piercing; the kind that comes from an elf’s lips.
“Ayara,” Toran gasped, sprinting his eyes open. He grit his teeth. “We were so close!”
“This is excellent,” Hohza cautioned his mentor. “We needed confirmation the Dread Lord was out of the dining room before we went there.”
Riding his wolf, Glum circled the old elf. “I think I recognize this part of the hall. The ghastly sconces, and a whiff of spice; I can get us the rest of the way.” He patted Greybrow’s head. The wolf lapped at the air and whined. “He definitely can.”
The goblin scouts gathered near Glum, still carrying the Tad statue and chest of lures.
After eyeing the Wraith’s Edge clutched in the statue’s left hand, Hohza turned to Glum. “I know you’re loathe to do it, but leave Tad with us. He may still be a vital weapon against the Dread Lord.”
The scouts toting Tad looked to Glum while the old goblin twisted his mouth in thought while considering his apprentice. He pulled his shoulders up and his his face. “Very well. I suppose he’s safe, anyway. He always was a little lazy. Combing invincibility with being a powerful weapon seems like the thing he’d do.” He smiled at his War Master. “Not that that was something I ever taught him!”
Bigrummar took Tad from the scouts.
“Glum and scouts,” Hohza said. “You get to the banquet hall and secure our exit. We’ll hold off the Dread Lord and join you once we’ve wounded them enough to escape. Doctor, you stay with us so we can get to the banquet hall.”
Glum departed, taking the scouts and Keg with him.
“War Party,” Bigrummar roared. His retinue of two dozen motley orcs, including Yurzan, turned in his direction. “We face the toughest enemy any warrior can hope to face. Not just a Dread Lord, but our Dread Lord.”
Some orcs gasped, others blinked in surprise, a couple cursed. One fellow commented “I thought it was an invasion from another domain!”
“You have my permission lay down arms if you so choose. I’m not sure I’m even your War Master anymore, anyway, since the great and wise Dread Lord Withering Sorrows has marked me and Yurzan for death.”
“We’re with you, boss,” one meek orc cheered from the back. He raised his sword in support, but it knocked a sconce from the wall and ducked to grab it from the floor before the carpet caught fire.
“If we succeed here tonight, I’ll flee with Hohza to the World of Light.”
“Sounds like you’d be better off dead,” some haggard old hand hollered nearby. Yurzan shot him a dirty look and pointed one knife at the guy. He shut up.
“You won’t be safe near the Keep after this. Scatter to the edges of the domain and never say you were of my War Party. In fact, I insist that you badmouth me at every opportunity!”
A laugh rippled through the team. Some orcs, whose chuckles had been guarded, then sheathed their swords and ran off.
Yurzan opened his mouth, about to spout insult, but glimpsed Bigrummar and Hohza’s stern looks. “Good luck,” Yurzan called after the deserters.
“Let’s be honest; it’s not like none of us ever thought of doing something like this before,” Barghur commented. He shrank into his shabby armor. When he suffered no remonstration from his comrades he smiled broadly. “Makers’ marvels, I never thought it would feel so good to admit that out in the open!”
After a bout of laughter that left . “Perhaps Withering Sorrows was right; my insolence is infectious!” The crowd joined him in laughing. When the Dread Lord struck they’d find an orc horde not only brimming with rebelliousness but contemptuous laughter!
They waited with weapons ready. In Bigrummar’s case, a weapon held by a statue.
They continued to wait.
“So where is the Dread Lord?”
A light broke the darkness far down the hall.
Toran pointed at the blast. “That’s the Lieutenant’s staff weapon!”
By pushing his comrades aside, Hohza got to the rear of the force. “Bonnelle,” he gasped. “The Rude Rubies are engaging the Dread Lord!” He pointed Stormblade towards the brawl. He could now hear the clash of Bonnelle’s hammer, the rustle of the sprites’ leaves, and Kornin’s grunts as the group combatted Withering Sorrows. Hohza broke into a sprint with the orcs and Bigrummar following.
Gohta kept alongside his War Master. His arms pumped with each stride, propelling his girth along. Burnblade and and Stormblade were practically side-by-side, flashing the hall in orange and blue as the orcs ran. “Better them than us, no?”
“No! They’re our way out of here!”
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“Begging your pardon, War Master,” Gohta countered between huffs for air. “But Toran is our ticket out of here. So long as we deliver him to Chrincha’s outpost, they’ll take us to the World of Light.”
“He’d be devastated to lose his niece!”
“And you that dwarf,” the words were cast from Gohta’s mouth more as an accusation than a question.
“I’m seeking the best outcome for everyone.”
They stopped. The hall was a thunderstorm of sparks and magical bolts. The Rude Rubies circled the Dread Lord, trading blows so furiously that it was unclear who was on the defensive. Withering Sorrows’ body was no longer humanlike. It seemed more like a fungus that twisted about to avoid it’s the brittle, flaking flesh tainted by the Wraith’s Edge. Towards the ceiling the wraith fanned out with scores of dripping strings to support itself. From the stem below, tendrils capped by scythes lashed out. Ayara, tall and lithe, weaved between them, by bending with the grace of a dancer. When she could, she’d pivot and let fly a blasts with her gloves. In contrast, Kornin weathered the assault with patience of a great old tree in a storm. With the sprites perched on his shoulders, Henri healing wounds as quickly as they appeared and Renaut intensifying the flames of the sconces he wielded, the burly elf stomped close and set the core of the wraith aflame. Bonnelle and Chrincha, who’d always seemed so contentious, had discovered the ability to work in concert during this life-or-death battle. As he readied his staff weapon, hobbling around to keep from being too ready a target, she swatted away the Dread Lord’s attacks. When at last he unleashed a blazing white spell at the Dread Lord which scorched the swarm of tendrils she charged in to hammer the wraith.
“An opening!” Hohza charged forward.
“The dwarf,” Gohta grumbled, although he followed.
Coming from a different angle, the two orcs didn’t benefit from Lt. Chrincha’s magic. They navigated thicket of the Dread Lord’s impromptu limbs. After years of fighting alongside each other, the need to call plans and commands had long since diminished. When thorny, grasping hand was about to rake Gohta’s face because his attention had been on the tentacle wrapping around his ankle, Hohza cut it down. The viscous mass of the Dread Lord splattered harmlessly against Gohta’s cheeks as he noticed his War Master about to be sawed by an approaching ribbon of razors. The fat orc hurled himself at the attack and slashed it away with Burnblade.
“Sorry about that, War Master,” Bonnelle grunted. Gohta slid to a stop by her feet just as she smacked her hammer sideways into the mass of the Dread Lord. It rippled and burbled like an overstuffed stomach. Somewhere deep inside was something akin to a voice which raged incoherently. “I think we were supposed to lead the fight to you.”
“Quite alright, Lady Rhodian.” Hohza helped Gohta to his feet. They chopped at the bristly protraction erupting all about and cut into the Dread Lord. Red fluid gushed from the wounds. Gohta caught some on his left arm. He screamed and thrust his sword deep into Withering Sorrows before tearing his scabbard from his belt and using it to knock off the Dread Lord’s caustic blood. Somewhere inside the roiling mass a voice shouted “Gohta!”
Vapor rose from the scorches on Gohta’s arm. He fastened his scabbard and pulled his sword from the Dread Lord, stepping aside as more blood spilled out. He caught Hohza looked at him with a quirky smile. “What?”
“Never thought I’d see a man teach the Dread Lord not to bleed on him!”
Gohta tipped his sword at the scorched skin, bright blue and blistering. “It really hurt!”
“Today is full of the unexpected, Hohza,” Bigrummar shouted, barely heard over the barrel of his steps. He kept Tad held in front as he charged the Dread Lord. Yurzan and Barghur ran just ahead of the troll, guarding either side from the Dread Lord’s defenses that sprang up. They staggered as they hacked and slashed at the tendrils, but Bigrummar stayed on his course, aiming the Wraith’s Edge in Tad’s hand at the stem of the raging wraith.
Then a wall of black lashed out like a giant tongue and knocked Bigrummar aside. Sconces shattered under his weight when he was pushed into the wall. Tad slipped from his grip and spun through the air. The statue collided with Barghur. Although the weight along crumbled the orc left arm, it was the Wraith’s Edge scraping across his chest that did the real damage. Red cuts exploded around his body. Skin sloughed into a bloody heap at his feet. He collapsed with the statue on top of him, crushing what life might have remained.
The Dread Lord cackled. With each dry laugh the black flesh at their core rippled. Bonnelle smashed it with her hammer. Black spray shot from the stem. It doused the nearest torches and hung in the air. “Retreat,” Bonnelle coughed.
Bigrummar stood over Barghur a moment. “Sorry, friend,” the troll said. He picked up Tad and joined the others, returning where they’d just charged from. Only the Dread Lord’s cruel joy chased them.
“Toran! Wonderful!” Bonnelle covered her face with her palm to sweep off the muck caking it. “Can you lead us to the Banquet Hall?”
The old elf was hugging his niece. He looked up from her. “Yes. You hurt Withering Sorrows? The halls feel less influenced by their magic. The way should be easier.”
“Hurt them further, I suppose. Never heard of a Dread Lord looking like that. It seems almost … like it’s not a person.” Hohza looked back, lips slightly parted. Sludge dripped from his chest.
“Remember, the wraiths were the only ones not born of the Primarch’s body. They were formed from his thoughts, and directly by the Makers. They’re not without reason or feelings, though.” Toran gulped. “I hope they can forgive me for this someday.”
“You’ll have plenty of time in Yendell before that becomes an issue.” Lt. Chrincha wrapped one hand around the crystal on his staff. He looked in the same direction as Hohza, wary of the Dread Lord’s approach. “I suggest we leave while we have the chance.”
“Yes. Yes.” Toran and Ayara let go of each other. “Hopefully Glum and the scouts have secured our exit. Follow me!”
The door was certainly grand enough to be for the banquet. It felt like it was in the right place as well. However, they couldn’t be sure it was the right door, given that it was blocked off by a thick coat of the Dread Lord’s tarry mass. Everyone stood around and gawped at it.
“Men! Cut it off,” Bigrummar ordered. His soldiers began cutting, but soon found their weapons dulled or bent and the skin unharmed. Holding the Tad statue, now splattered with Barghur’s blood, the troll touched the tip of the Wraith’s Edge to the barrier. Although the blade skimmed the surface it didn’t destroy it.
“That’s not something alive,” Toran said. “It’s just a magical construct. The Wraith’s Edge will have no effect.”
“I can handle magical constructs.” Lt. Chrincha took up position squarely before the barrier. He aimed his staff weapon and blasted the door with a shot so brilliant the hall flashed with the sun’s fury. Once everyone lowered their hands from their eyes and blinked away the afterimage, they saw the barrier stood unharmed.
“War Master Hohza,” Glum’s voice, faint, called from the other side. “Is that you?”
Hohza pushed the Lieutenant aside. “Glum! Yes, we’re here! The Dread Lord seems to have blocked the door!”
“It wasn’t like that a moment ago. We got in just fine and made ladder off the balcony using the curtains and tablecloth. We were getting ready to go back into the hall and look for you, but then the doors slammed shut!” After a brief pause. “Is Tad safe?”
“Safer than any of us,” Hohza answered, a slight laugh in his voice. “We’ll think of something. Keep working that ladder in the meantime.”
“Unbelievable. Did Withering Sorrows know we were coming here? Or maybe they’ve done this to most doors to keep us trapped in the hall.” Bonnelle tested her hammer against the barrier. She pressed the head in and tried to move it around but found the surface was resistant. When she removed her hammer it made strong puckering noise. The dwarf hid her face under one hand and giggled at the sound.
“We could maybe burn it.” Renaut rummaged through her pockets.
“Yes! A magic fire might be enough to counter the wraith‘s barrier. It’s powerful, sure, but not invincible,” Henri said.
Touching her lover’s arm, Ayara urged Kornin by sayin his name. “You can do this,” she said, a warm smile on his face, as he looked at her. “I know you can.”
The big elf sighed. “Ayara, the blood’s not that strong in me.”
“Just be stubborn!” She leaned closer. The tip of her nose brushed his chin. “Like a human,” she whispered.
Renaut, standing on Kornin’s right shoulder, gasped in surprise. “Kornin! Is she saying what I think she’s saying?”
“What is she saying?” Lieutenant Chrincha barged into the conversation, holding up his staff as though the faded jewel in its head mattered.
“I’m part human,” Kornin said. He twisted, presenting his right shoulder to Ayara. She took Renaut from there and set the sprite on her shoulder, then did the same with Henri. “I’m sure that offends you almost as much as the Sorceress being half dwarf.”
“Nonsense! I’m not some bigot. I just—“
“Don’t know when to shut it, Lieutenant,” Bonnelle commented, a slight scowl on her face. She looked up to Kornin, appraising his chiseled features anew. “Sometimes I thought I could see a hint of stubble on you. And you always kept a knife around. It seemed so not you. It’s for shaving, isn’t it?”
Blushing, Kornin focused on the barrier. “Knives are useful, Bonnelle. Skinning animals, cutting ropes … you should always have one around.”
“But he does use it to shave,” Ayara said.
“Shave?” Assorted orcs gathered in the hall stroked their gruff beards. “Why?”
Standing before the barrier, Kornin took a deep breath and rubbed his hands together. “What if this doesn’t work?”
“Remove your hands the moment you feel the barrier start eating your skin,” Bonnelle answered.
“You can do it, Kornin!” Ayara beamed at the man, raising one arm up in cheers.
Hohza, standing beside his instructor, bent to whisper into the old elf’s ear: “Your whole family is like this?”
“Wonderful, isn’t it? I hope you can meet my brother and nephew.”
“As do I.”
Kornin plunged his hands into the slimey barrier. When it sucked against his fingers they tingled but didn’t burn. Kornin pushed his hands together, feeling the slime peel away from the door. When a slab was in his grip he began tearing it away. It fought his pull, clinging to the door with thick strings that snapped after considerable effort. Finally, Kornin cast aside a brick of the Dread Lord’s magic. When it struck the carpeted floor it shuddered and boiled away.
Panting, Kornin swiped a film of sweat from his brow with the back of his hand. “That was tougher than I expected!”
With giddy enthusiasm Ayara threw herself into the man. With their arms wrapped around each other they spun and kissed. “You didn’t think you could do it at all!” She pulled away. “Now, finish this up and we’ll be on our way.”
When Kornin peeled the last of the barrier from the door the hall erupted into cheers. Orcs, elves, and sprites cheered as one. Bonnelle smashed the door and ushered everyone into the banquet hall, holding Hohza and Gohta back.
“We’re the only ones with weapons that hurt the Dread Lord. We stay in the rear to hold them off,” she told Hohza.
“How very noble of you … on our behalf,” Gohta groused.
Hohza hefted his sword. Its electric blue glow matched the grotesque light of the sconces. “If ever wish to be a War Master, Gohta, you need to learn it requires you to take responsibility for those under you.”
“I’m not trying to make heroes of us, but this is how we ensure the best outcome for everyone.” Bonnelle ripped her dress, exposing her meaty thigh to increase mobility. She glanced down the hall while gnawing her lower lip.
Hohza removed his too-tight vest and tossed it to her. “You look a little cold.”
Giving the orc a wry smile, the dwarf wrapped the vest around herself. “Not used to men wanting me to put on more.”
Something deep in the shadows stirred. “Hohza,” the Dread Lord spoke, their voice a low rasp.